Hackzilla.org

I am always up for money saving tips, and money off.

So when I heard about Give or Take I was impressed.

Give or Take is cash back website that allows you claim back a proportion of the money you spend online at some retailers.

Some times its a percentage of the sale, and some times its a fixed amount.

Recently I’ve purchased a Dell Vostro 1000 (read my review), my car insurance, a copy of Command and Conquer 3 and have also signed up for an American Express Nectar card and a free credit check.

Total Cash Back: £168.97

I should get a cheque beginning of October 2007, minus a £5 admin fee for the year.

That’s not a bad amount when I had spent only £530 on items I was going to buy anyway.

How much could you claim back using Give or Take?

What is Cygwin?

Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. It consists of two parts:

• A DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a Linux API emulation layer providing substantial Linux API functionality.
• A collection of tools which provide Linux look and feel.

Why is it useful?

With Cygwin you can compile lots of Linux applications with little or no modification for use on your Windows computer.
Take advantage of Bash scripting and whole host of other useful Linux programs, like traceroute, whois, xwindow and hostx.

How can I get it?

This is the easy part. Go to the Cygwin website and download setup.exe.
The set-up process is straight forward, and there will be three decisions to make:

• Where you want your Linux root to be installed
• Which mirror you would like to use
• which packages to use and you are on your way.

You will now have successfully installed Cygwin.

If you have any stories about Cgywin, feel free to post comments about them.

Suppose you have a script in PHP that you only ever want to only ever run one instance of.

For example:

• Maintenance script (repair,optimise)
• Update script (crawler)
• Server

These types of scripts need only to be launched once, and more could be counter productive or even dangerous.

The simplest way to stop multiple instances is to check to see if the last running script is still running.

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This is a little project that a friend and I put together.

I have found I kept getting an error when I modified some of the example code.

The error message was:

After trying a few of the suggested fixes I was starting to give up hope.

Luckly I found a post suggesting  to change the configuration from debug to retail and recompiling.

It worked!

OpenCV stands for Open Computer Vision Library.

OpenCV is an open source library for computer vision development.  There are some very interesting sample applications included with this library.

This sounds like the perfect start for Sir Bones.

Before we can start we need to be able to build the library.

Requirements

• OpenCV Library
• Visual Studio 2005 Express C++
• Windows Platform SDK

Optional

• Visual Studio 2005 Express C++ SP1

We are going to be using Microsoft Visual Studio for this install.
The reasons for this include Support from OpenCV, Lots of Internet Articles for creating software, MSDN, Offical Software and its FREE.

Step 1 - Installing Visual C++ and Platform SDK

Visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualc/usingpsdk/ and follow Microsofts Guide to setup Visual C++ and the Platform SDK.

When you get to Step 3, add this line to "Include Files" (assume default install location)
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK for Windows Server 2003 R2\Include\mfc

This is because OpenCV requires some files that are inside that folder.

Step 2 - Update Visual C++ with Service Pack 1 (Optional)

Service Packs for the each of the Visual Studio products are available on one page from Microsoft.

Visual Studio 2005 Express SP1

The specific update that you will require is called "C++ 2005 Express Edition SP1 - VS80sp1-KB926748-X86-INTL.exe"

Step 3 - Install OpenCV

Go get OpenCV Library and download OpenCV 1.0 for Windows

Installation is straight forward.

Step 4 - Customising Visual C++ for use with OpenCV

We need to setup the directories for Open Visual C++

• Open Visual C++
• Choose menu "Tools" and select "Options"
• In "Projects and Solutions"  and go to "VC++ Directories"
• Show directories for "Library Files"
• Add "C:\Program Files\OpenCV\lib" to the list of directories

Step 5 - Open "OpenCV Workspace .NET 2005"

In the start menu a folder called "Open CV" was created when you installed OpenCV.

Inside the folder "OpenCV" there is a shortcut called "OpenCV Workspace .NET 2005"

Open "OpenCV Workspace .NET 2005"

This will load OpenCV solution within Visual C++

There is one last thing you need to do, to be able to compile OpenCV.

• Choose menu "Build" and Select "Configuration Manager"
• Change "Active solution configuration" to either "Debug" or "Release"

Step 6 - Build

Now that everything is installed and setup; building OpenCV should be a breeze.

• Choose menu "Build" and Select "Build Solution"

Building OpenCV can take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour.
When I built OpenCV it took about 10 minutes.< /p>

Congratulations OpenCV is now installed and built.

Update: Problem compiling OpenCV with Visual C++

Have you ever wanted to record information in notepad and automatically have the date and time inserted?

Well now you can.

Open notepad and insert the following:

.LOG

Now save the document as <filename>.log

Also change the "Save as type" to "All Files", this is to prevent notepad saving the document as <filename>.log.txt

(Remember to replace <filename> with the actual name of the document you want to save as)

Now every time you open this document, the current date and time will be entered in for you.

Easy huh?

View Video of this useful trick for notepad in action

You see the oddest of things in the real world.

This message was seen on a XBox 360 during the Christmas Sales in Game store.

We are unsure as to the intent of the message.

Is it?

1. Humour?
2. Stupidity?
3. or the Xbox is broken and they have no idea when it will be fixed?

Personally we feel it’s either option 1 or 3.

I have been looking everywhere for some realistic ears for Sir Bones.   The idea of the ears is to channel forward sound in to the microphone; just like in the human body.

Trying to find realist ears is actually quite hard.  Most of the ears available are novelty ears, over-sized and not very realistic.
I even went into a fancy dress shop to ask if they knew where I could get some, with no luck.

Recently I was shopping in Tesco's and I noticed this scary Halloween mask. The ears were almost perfect size for Sir Bones, so I could not resist buying this face mask.

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Polymorph is a great substance that is malleable when heated to 62°C using hot water or a hair dryer.

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